Hypothesis

Statement

A literary technique transfers responsibly only when its function can be separated from authority grounded in the writer's community, language, history, identity, relationships, or access to culturally governed material.

Mechanism and predictions

Techniques such as montage, code-switching, counterhistory, oral cadence, and collective address derive force partly from who speaks to whom under which history. Functional abstraction can preserve information architecture, but persona imitation or decontextualized borrowing will reduce trust, distort meaning, or appropriate authority. Readers with relevant cultural knowledge should identify such failures more often than outsiders.

Evidence and limits

Five cluster evidence records support the boundary through convergent literary cases. No controlled reception study was run; “situated authority” needs a discipline-specific operational definition.

Current assessment

Provisionally supported, Medium (0.66 judgment).

Next experiment

Use community review to compare a functional paraphrase, contextualized adaptation, and persona imitation; measure distortion, trust, attribution, appropriation concern, and task fit. Do not expose sacred/restricted material.